Do you know what happens when you blow soap bubbles into a cooler full of liquid and gaseous nitrogen? Neither did we, so we found out. It turns out to be pretty cool.

Totally unrelated: This Saturday (9/29), there’ll be a repeat of the “roadside emergency skills for non-greasemonkeys” class, which we’ve run several times. Change a tire, jump a dead battery, that sort of stuff. Please register if you plan to attend.

Speaking of cars: Our Power Wheels car #3 is going to World Maker Faire in NYC! It happens this weekend, so if you happen to be on the east coast as you read this, come say hi!

These computers are supported by most major Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, ArchLinux, etc.) and are capable of running Android, QNX, Windows Embedded and a number of other operating systems. The latest computer, the BeagleBone, provides a bit of an Arduino-like platform in that it enables access to an extensive amount of low-level I/O, including 7 analog inputs and over 60 general-purpose I/O pins multiplexed with an LCD interface, 2 I2C serial ports, 5 UART serial ports, an SPI port, a CAN bus, an secondary MMC/SD port, 6 pulse-width modulators and much more. At 720MHz and 256MB of RAM, with on-board Ethernet, microSD (for operating system storage), JTAG hardware debug, USB-to-serial and more, the BeagleBone is capable of running Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, GCC C++ compiler, autotools and a full GNOME desktop with word processors, spreadsheets, 3D games and web browsers.

I’m a co-founder of the project and I’ll be giving a hands-on workshop tonight at i3-Detroit, starting with the BeagleBone 101 presentation and diving into whatever topics attendees are looking to cover for their projects. I’ll leave a couple of boards in the space for people that want to hack on them and will be putting together some larger workshops at the space if there is enough interest. If you have a project you’d like to execute in the hackerspace using the BeagleBone, it’d be really great to work with you on it and help make i3-Detroit the home for advancement of low-power, high-performance embedded processing.

Friday, April 6, 5pm-10pm-ish: Open Shop Friday, holiday weekend edition! With so many members off work for the day, there’ll be someone around the shop earlier than normal to open the doors and host guests. This is an ideal time to drop in and see the space, meet the members, and work on a project!

Friday April 27 thru Sunday April 29: Penguicon (off-site). Geek-interest conference, expanding to larger digs in Dearborn this year. Several i3 Detroit members are presenting, teaching, and otherwise involved. There may not be an Open Shop this day because most of us will be at the con.

(Also, hello Detroit News visitors! What do you hack? What do you make? Let us know in comments!)

https://www.i3detroit.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Logo_large_png8-300x98.png00nbezansonhttps://www.i3detroit.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Logo_large_png8-300x98.pngnbezanson2012-04-05 12:14:462012-04-19 20:35:06Upcoming events at i3 Detroit, including two more classes

Looking for an excuse to visit the space? As if Open Shop Friday weren’t enough already, come this week (2/24) and get a quickie demo on how to use the vinyl cutter!

Of all the machines in the space, this is one of the easiest to learn, cheapest to run, and most addictive to use. Start with vector art, and within minutes, you’ll be sticking it on your friend’s car. With their permission, of course…

Like every Open Shop Friday, first-timer visitors are explicitly welcome. Just show up, 6pm or later, and figure out the doorbell. 😉

It’s not scary, it’s not difficult, and it doesn’t take years to learn. I think I can prove that to you though this crash course on computer programming. It’s not going to get you a job at Google, but it will let you figure out which words are used most frequently in the book “Alice in Wonderland”, or generate a list of anagrams for your friend’s names! Isn’t technology amazing?